John Mancino: What becomes of a country that kills its children?

In recent weeks the controversy over late-term abortion has reached a fever pitch.

The New York State Senate passed a bill in a 38-24 vote on January 22nd on the 46th anniversary of the United States Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling. Meanwhile the state Assembly passed it 92-47 on the same day, leading Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo to sign the bill into law.

While the left cheered the bill’s passage, much criticism began to hit the radio talk shows as well as newspapers across the nation.

Critics of the bill say that the “health of the mother” provision is too vague because does not clearly define what that term means and could lead to effectively legalizing abortion up to the moment of birth.

Actor Nick Searcy, who directed the film Gosnell: The trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer, and actor Dean Cain, who co-starred in the film, claimed that the act would make crimes of Kermit Gosnell legal in New York.

Godnell was convicted of murder for late-term abortion procedures on babies born alive.

The bill was also criticized by others due to the removal of abortion from the criminal code, with potential consequences for crimes against pregnant women. State Representative, Nicole Malliotakis, argued that removing abortion from the criminal code could mean that a fetus that dies as a result of an assault on a woman would lead to no prosecution.

A Bronx woman named Livia Abreu, who has lost her baby in 2018 due to an attack by her ex-boyfriend, (Oscar Alvarez stabbed Ms. Abreu), would never see him prosecuted for the crime of abortion due to the passage of this bill.

And as a result of this new law, the Queens District Attorney’s office dropped the second-degree abortion charges against a man who murdered his pregnant girlfriend. The DA’s office said that their ability to press the charge of second-degree abortion was repealed by the law – the so-called Reproductive Health Act.

Meanwhile, in Virginia House Bill 2491 makes its way through the legislature.

Prior to the introduction of 2491 any late-term abortion required the approval of both the pregnant mother and three doctors. If 2491 passes this requirement would be repealed and the abortion approval would only require one doctor. Additionally, the 24-hour waiting period, which requires women to wait a full day and undergo counseling before having an abortion, would also be repealed.

The single doctor would only have to indicate that the mother’s “mental or physical health is threatened.” However, the term “mental health” is not clearly defined either.

In other words, if mom decides that having a baby is not convenient, for whatever reason, and therefore displays any sign of emotional instability, the doctor would be able to approve the abortion of a baby ready to be born.

Virginia’s Democratic Governor, Ralph Northam, who supports the bill authored by Democrat, Kathy Tran, said that these “third-trimester abortions are done with the consent of obviously the mother, with the consent of the physicians, more than one physician, and it’s done in cases where there can be severe deformities, there may be a fetus that’s non-viable. So in this particular example, if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

These comments by this, a pediatrician of all things, were made on a radio program and caused much controversy for days.

Just what are we becoming in this country where a viable baby, already born, can be terminated because the mother and/or family decides against having the baby after all?

Ben Shapiro, a radio talk show host on KABC Radio and a Fox News commentator, said, “This is simply pure evil.”

At a recent committee hearing, Republican state delegate Todd Gilbert asked the bill’s author, Tran, to clarify whether her bill would allow abortions to women who were about to deliver. “She’s dilating,” Gilbert said. The answer was that it was a decision that would be made by the mother and the doctor. In other words, yes.

Based on the latest state-level data, approximately 881,000 abortions took place in the United States during 2017. This is down from 885,000 in 2016 and 913,000 in 2015.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, an estimated 926,000 abortions took place in the United States in 2014, which was down from 1.06 million in 2011.

According to the United Nations’ 2013 report on abortion, only nine countries in the world have a higher reported abortion rate that the United States. And with the exception of Georgia, Sweden and the Ukraine, the others are considered third-world nations.

During 2014, the highest percentage of pregnancies that resulted in abortion occurred in Washington, DC – 38%. New York followed with 33%, and New Jersey with 30%. The lowest percentages of pregnancies that resulted in abortion were in Utah (5%), South Dakota (4%) and Wyoming (<2%).

Stats that reflect the current leaning to the left politically that should alarm all of us are:

In 2015, unmarried women accounted for 86% of all abortions, according the Center for Disease Control (CDC)

Among married women, 4% of pregnancies currently end in abortion

Among unmarried women, 27% of pregnancies end in abortion

Women in their 20s accounted for the majority of abortions in 2015 and had the highest abortion rates (CDC)

More alarming facts:

Women living with a partner whom they are not married to account for 25% of abortions

In 2015, women who had not aborted in the past accounted for 56% of all abortions, reflecting a more liberal attitude toward the procedure (National Abortion Federation, NAF)

Among white women, 10% of pregnancies end in abortion, while 28% of black women pregnancies end in abortion (CDC)

Black women were more than 3.5 times likely to have an abortion in 2015 than white women (CDC)

The abortion rate of non-metropolitan women is about half that of women who live in metropolitan counties (NAF)

The abortion rate of women with Medicaid coverage is three times as high as that of other women (NAF)

In the late 1990s I debated famed feminist attorney Gloria Allred on the subject of abortion. When I asked Ms. Allred what her main support for the procedure was, her response was primarily due to cases of rape and incest, along with the health of the mother.

When I pointed out that a very small percentage of the abortions performed each year in the United States were performed as a result of rape or incest, Ms. Allred had no response.

Similarly, the Guttmacher Institute backs up my claims in the 2004 study where they surveyed 1,209 post-abortive women from nine different abortion clinics across the country. Of the women surveyed, 957 provided the following:

<0.5% Victim of rape
3% Fetal health problems
4% Physical health problems
4% Would interfere with education or career
7% Not mature enough to raise a child
8% Don’t want to be a single mother
19% Done having children
23% Can’t afford a baby
25% Not ready for a child
6% Other

So what do these figures tell us? Eighty-six percent resulted from seemingly less than reasonable reasons. Certainly less reasonable than the termination of a viable baby.

More alarming is the fact that 40 percent of minors having had an abortion report that neither of their parents knew about the abortion. And while 39 states enforce parental consent or notification laws for minors seeking an abortion, the rest do not require consent or notification, as is the case in my state of California where school officials can remove one’s minor child from campus and facilitate an abortion for that minor child without so much as notifying the parent(s).

Twice in the early 2000s I worked on two propositions, both Propositions 85, to require parental notification before administering an abortion to a minor child. Both times the initiative failed to pass.

In my state in 2014, taxpayers footed the bill for 88,466 abortions costing millions. In New York another big state controlled by Democrats, public funds were used to pay for 45,722 abortions.

It is high time the folks – taxpayers – learned just how much more of their paychecks they could take home if they weren’t paying for abortions in cases where the majority are the result of recreational sex, or “accidents”, or a change of mind with regard to having a baby, leading to severe and cruel consequences.

However, more important is the question of where we are headed morally in these United States. We are the leaders of the free world, the country that most others would like to emulate.

We are not setting a very good example in this, the 21st century. And all one has to do to see where this could lead us is to look as far back as the Greek and Roman Empires. Every nation that gave up its principles and its moral fabric since those long ago days has crumbled like an old cookie.

I’d like every American to look into his or her heart and ask themself if the direction this nation is headed in is something they feel their children and grandchildren would be proud of.